C. S. Lewis Quotes

Fullness of joy is discovered only in the emptying of will.

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.

I wish people could achieve what they think would bring them happiness in order for them to realize that that's not really what happiness is.

Materialism is the only form of distraction from true bliss.

I have a very good life, so I have nothing to complain about. Sometimes, I just have existential angst.

Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalised.

Nothing about his life is more strange to [man] or more unaccountable in purely mundane terms than the stirrings he finds in himself, usually fitful but sometimes overwhelming, to look beyond his animal existence and not be fully satisfied with its immediate substance. He lacks the complacency of the other animals: he is obsessed by pride and guilt, pride at being something more than a mere animal, built at falling short of the high aims he sets for himself.

Was there nought better than to enjoy? No feat which, done, would make time break, And let us pent-up creatures through Into eternity, our due? No forcing earth teach heaven's employ?

But if one had everything one could ever need or want, what was left to dream of?

Only meditation, only silence, only transcending beyond your mind is going to give you contentment and fulfillment.

Without love a man is just a body, an empty temple without the deity. With love the deity arrives, the temple is no more empty. That's why love gives such fullness, such deep contentment, such tremendously overflowing joy. Remain in love and let love be the door to the divine.

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.

Stardom is no longer the fuel of my soul. It is the deeper aspects of life that nurture me. And I realise I am very blessed.

From success you get a lot of things, but not that great inside thing that love brings you.

A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one's life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted.

He is lost who is possessed by carnal desire.

No one can be said to be happy until he is dead.

Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend. Non-being is the greatest joy.

Let me be content with being happy, without sighing that I am not distinguished.

Just because you're born in a privileged family and have money doesn't mean you're happy. Happiness you can't buy. Happiness is something you need to work for.

I try to live by the rule do what makes you happy.

I realize everybody wants what they don't have. But at the end of the day, what you have inside is much more beautiful than what's on the outside!

Existence itself does not feel horrible; it feels like an ecstasy, rather, which we have only to be still to experience.

There are wonderfully intrinsic moments when life makes sense, and doubts are banished as irrelevant in those moments. Of course, we can't stay in that state. We're not here to be blissed out all the time.

I shall give you hunger, and pain, and sleepless nights. Also beauty, and satisfactions known to few, and glimpses of the heavenly life. None of these you shall have continually, and of their coming and going you shall not be foretold.